the facade is colorful and slick
the name is clever
there are catchy banners and slogans
in there, written on brochures and posters
and they advertise their product well
when you enter, you are greeted by big smiles
people ask you how you are, they even chat with you
about the weather we've been having
and ask if there's anything they can do to help us
whatever we need, just say so, and our wish is
their command
the decor is immaculate, right down to
the carpets and the lamps and the elevator buttons
what shiny elevator buttons they have
a man, a full grown, handsome, strong man
polishes the railing of the stairs
he wears a uniform that doesn't sit quite right
somehow, the right size and everything
but not right
and he looks up to me to smile and greet me
but for a split second, before the smile, i see
something else, something
he holds deep within himself, something secret
something unholy that he's not allowed to share here
not here, not with me
i am a profusion of thank yous as i go to my room
where the bed sheets are laid out
for my comfort
and the TVs and chargers and hair dryers and telephones
are there decked out for my convenience
and when i bring the handle to my ear
"yes sir hello sir how may i help you sir"
and they even have an elaborate ceramic contraption
right next to the crapper
where i can wash my butt hole
"Please sir, please, wash your butt hole! you will have
the cleanest of clean butt holes!"
and there's even a gel in a little plastic pack that some poor
woman working in some factory somewhere on minimum wage
had to squeeze some of this "intimate cleansing gel" into and seal and send off
down the factory line to some other mass of waiting men and women
(people!)
who stood shoulder to shoulder
and counted their days out, day in day out, with these packages of intimate cleanser
so that i could intimately cleanse my oh so precious anus
and then wash and clean and dry it
because i paid for it
or someone paid for it
and so those smiles and smiles and smiles, they never ended
in the morning the elevator was slow or busted or something
i waited and waited
people rushed to my help and said they were trying to fix things
and they were so sorry, they were all so so sorry
but i needed to leave so i took the stairs down
i pushed that bar across the door and entered beneath an ominous
fire sign that said emergency, as if a gateway to a lesser, more modern
inferno (where nobody really suffered anything terrible, it was just a...) stairwell
a grey, cold, lifeless stairwell that just kept winding down with the echoing of my steps
(and perhaps that's what hell really is) but it didn't lead out into the slick, glowing, golden
carpeted lobby and there were no men in uniforms to greet me
i found myself outside the hotel, in a little courtyard
next to where the hotel restaurant's kitchen was
and there were boxes everywhere, and pots and pans and broken things
and i thought i'd come out the wrong way so
i turned to look behind me
and i saw two men and a woman
who worked in the hotel
they had their uniforms on, one was a cook, one was a bellboy, the other a waiter
and they were crouched down smoking cigarettes
when they saw me, none of them moved or smiled or greeted me
they just kept smoking and stared at me
and my smile, the smile i had memorized to give in these places
that smile vanished, and the big Good Morning i had memorized to give in
these instances, that didn't even make it up to my throat
for a moment we all just stood there looking at each other
it was a wrong turn i'd made
and we all knew what had happened
one wrong turn
and all the veneer came peeling off
all the shiny glossy bright painted bullshit was swept off
and all we were left with was the cruel visceral reality
of men standing and staring into each others eyes
the way they would have a million years ago
when men weren't even yet men
they were something fearsome, different, apelike
staring the way they would have if they met upon a plain
with the tall sweeping grasses
of some terrifying savannah when wild beasts and apemen
roamed and murdered and ripped each other to shreds for survival
but there in that cold, grey courtyard
away from the gaze and care of our cruel, distant, fabulous, profiteering gods
in those places where they hadn't conquered
there, the cruelty was manifested in boredom, decay, meaninglessness
poverty... the need to survive, the wage, the labor sold, the men and the women
who sold their hours and their days away
bought up for a handsome buck, made pretty pennies off
and resold for a lot more
with all the swanky greasy jingles that
hypnotized and dulled us
into swallowing and consuming all that muck
but now we just stood there in that apeman standoff
and that moment lasted all this time, all this time it took to write it out
it took all the time from a million years past until it came to its own in that moment
none of us said a word
the crouching cook put out that burning butt between his fingers
blew the smoke out the side of his mouth
turned his gaze away
and pointed out
the exit
